


Some Corner of a Foreign Field [that is forever England]

by SylvanWitch



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mission Fic, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 02:59:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1763557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bond may not believe in sin, but he understands atonement intimately.</p><p>Or, five times Q was the voice Bond needed to hear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Corner of a Foreign Field [that is forever England]

**Author's Note:**

> The rape referred to in the warnings is described in graphic detail. Bond is a BAMF survivor, but that doesn't change the horror of the assault. Also, he doesn't deal with it in a particularly healthy way.
> 
> There's a lot of violence in the story, too, canon-typical for Fleming. If that isn't your thing, you might want to skip this story.
> 
> Finally, I had a lot of fun with Cairo, but I've never been there. If you have, your mileage may vary.
> 
> The title is taken from Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier." This story was influenced by the Craig films, obviously, but also by Fleming's _Casino Royale_ and _Live and Let Die_ , which I read while writing. That Fleming guy knew something about description, boy-o.

“Target acquired.  Am I clear?”

“Scanning…”

“Target’s moving.  Am I clear?”

“I can’t…wait!  No.  No shot, 007.  Remain static.  Observation only.”

Bond let out a silent breath and eased his finger from the trigger of his rifle but didn’t move his eye away from its sight.  A hundred and ten yards away, Le Reynard Rouge strolled beside an aquamarine pool, the water throwing shards of light against the pale linen of his trousers. 

He had one hand in his pocket, the other around the waist of a voluptuous beauty wearing a thong and a smile.

Discreet guards took up the bulk of the shadows cast by the long, low house to which the pool belonged.

A sudden burst of color from the open sliding door at the back of the house drew his eye, and Bond watched through his scope as a blonde girl of no more than four or five raced across the pool apron to be swept up into Reynard’s arms.

He twirled her, and she laughed, a pealing sound Bond could hear even over the low hum of the air conditioning unit on the far end of the roof from which he observed the scene.

The topless woman’s plastic smile grew strained as she realized she was being ignored, and she eventually moved off to stretch out on a lounger.

As a general rule, Bond didn’t scruple to kill a mark in front of his mistress, but MI6 preferred he not murder people in front of their children, and he abided by their policy.  Usually.

Since Reynard was a notorious human trafficker who specialized in selling little boys to houses of prostitution in Thailand, Bond considered making an exception, pretending he hadn’t heard Q.

“007?”

“Understood,” he said, keeping the impatience he was feeling from coloring his voice.  After all, it wasn’t Q’s fault that the little girl was there.  It wasn’t even the Quartermaster’s fault that infrared satellite technology had advanced to its current state, wherein a boffin prince nine hundred miles away could determine the presence of undesirable witnesses without so much as setting down his tea.

Had Bond been without Q’s “eyes,” he’d have been able to get in the shot before the child had exited the house.

Of course, it wouldn’t have stopped the girl from running through her father’s brain-splatter.

_We prefer to kill our enemies, not engender new ones, 007._

He could hear the old M’s dry observation, could see the way one eyebrow arched superciliously, challenging him to argue with her.

Bond dismissed the thought, returning focus to the target, who was sitting with his little girl beneath a wide, white umbrella at a table with a pitcher of juice and plates of fruit.

She was chattering away, and he was watching her with an enrapt expression, clearly smitten.

Not for the first time, nor even the first hundredth, Bond considered the vagaries of criminal nature, that a man could take such delight in his own child but completely disregard the love other parents bore for the sons he stole from them.

Then Q was saying, “Mission parameters have altered.  You can stand down.  Await further orders.”

“Understood,” he repeated, grateful to be able to shift from his static position, stretch his muscles, brush the roof grit away from his bare forearms where they’d rested in the traditional sniper’s posture.

“Sorry,” Q added then, sounding genuinely contrite, as though he’d somehow divined Bond’s earlier irritation with Q’s precious technology.

Bond smirked, offered an invisible shrug.  “Quite alright.  Gives me time for a swim.”

His shirt was stuck to his back; sweat had pooled at the small of it and soaked the waistband of his trousers.  Reynard’s pool had been a kind of mirage, teasing Bond with its cool promise.  He’d take advantage of the hotel’s private beach as soon as he was back to his room.

“Don’t get too comfortable, 007,” Q answered.  “The target’s personal calendar lists a fitting in one hour.”

Bond had to acknowledge that technology—particularly the new Quartermaster’s superb hacking skills—came in handy now and again.  Knowing where the mark was going without having to undertake the tedious task of surveillance was a relatively new and decidedly welcome perquisite of the job. 

Bond nodded.  “Gucci?”  He tried to keep his opinion out of his voice—he found their recent men’s line ostentatious—but Q must have heard it nevertheless because he snorted rather inelegantly.

“2:00” was all he said, however, and Bond answered, “Looking forward to it,” by way of signing off. 

He’d finished packing his rifle and was jogging down the wrought iron fire escape, past the open windows of flats, from which the blare of midday news programs, cooking shows, an arguing couple, a crying baby washed over him as he moved.

He didn’t envy the domesticity any more than he wished to be in London, sharing the cool, sterile air of MI6’s offices with the Quartermaster.

In those very offices, surrounded by the efficient susurrus of machinery that made for a most comforting and familiar background noise, Q let his thoughts stray momentarily from his daily tasks to an image of Bond in a sporty convertible, something ridiculously expensive but understated that bespoke power and elegance, danger and desire, much like the man himself.  He imagined Bond’s eyelashes, nearly invisible in the clear Riviera sun, and his eyes reflecting the piercing blue of the Mediterranean as he drove some dust-white, winding road above the sea.

Then he wondered for the fiftieth time in as many days—the number of days since he’d gotten the order—why M was insisting that Q handle Bond’s field operations; it wasn’t as though MI6  weren’t full of qualified handlers, some of them a good deal older and many of them more experienced than the head of Q branch himself.

Not to mention that Q had many more pressing—and significant—responsibilities.

Yet M had been immovable, offering no explanation, merely the order, delivered in that urbane, slightly superior tone he’d used even when he’d just been Mallory.

Q had, naturally, acquiesced.

Sighing, he turned to the queue of confidential emails awaiting his immediate attention and shut out an image of M in his office some floors above, surveying London like a harbinger crow, all biding foresight and grimness.

 “Sufficient unto the day,” he muttered, returning to his work.

*****

The rhythmic protest of a bed frame alerted Q to what he already knew:  Bond had accomplished the first stage of his mission to gather information on Russian plans in Ukraine by seducing the wife of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs while they were on an ostensible good will tour of the Republic of Georgia.

What he didn’t know is why Bond hadn’t silenced his comm for this part of the mission; it was against protocol but standard operating procedure for 007.

“Why?” Bond had responded when Q had asked him once to follow protocol, his voice dipping flirtatiously.  “Are you taking notes on my technique?”

Q had refused to rise to Bond’s bait, only noting in his log that Bond was recalcitrant in the matter.

Now, Q rather wished the agent would return to form; the noises the Russian woman was making were audible to his nearest staff, and there was an uncomfortable nervous tension in the room that made the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

They were to every last man and woman consummate professionals (on a moment’s consideration, Q regretted his choice of words), but even professionalism had its limits, and this woman was simply ridiculous in her…expressions of passion.

For his part, Bond was feeling almost as tense as his invisible audience.  While he was assured that the Deputy Minister would be out for at least another two hours—the Georgian Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs was a notorious libertine and wouldn’t relinquish his guest until the wee hours—he was less secure in the notion that the Deputy Minister’s wife was worth the effort he was putting into her.

Aside from a prodigious appetite for celebrity gossip from the UK, the woman had exhibited little interest in talking, preferring to use her tongue—wet and intrusive—for some of the filthier explorations of his person.

Once upon a time, Bond may have enjoyed her enthusiasm, even shared in it.  Now, however, he was just playing a role, one which rather wore on him as he felt her heels graze a new bruise low on his back, an injury he’d incurred while scouting the location for the evening’s diplomatic dinner.

Perhaps he was getting old, Bond thought, even as he expertly flipped her so that she was astride him and his tender kidney was rescued from further abuse.

Certainly, his heart wasn’t really in it.

Then again, when had it ever been, excepting that one particular instance about which he refused to think?

At least his flesh was still willing, though his spirit for seduction was weak.

At last, she finished, squealing like he’d just slit her open from navel to neckline, and with the consequent convulsions of her body around him, he, too, spent himself—silently.

As she murmured indistinct syllables into his damp neck, Bond stroked her back absently and glanced at the clock.  Given his refractory period, he had time to explore the couple’s suite if only he could coax her into sleep.

Unfortunately, she sat up, shivering under his hand, and with a coquettish moue invited him into the shower.

Sighing almost inaudibly, Bond waved her ahead with a fixed smile and muttered, “No pillow talk tonight.  Sorry,” before disengaging the comm link and following her into the bathroom.

Q’s “No problem, 007” was met with the dead air of a no longer active line, and he wondered at the tone in Bond’s voice.  He’d sounded almost…dispirited…which was hardly a word he’d have considered using to describe Bond under his current conditions.

Bond was traditionally—almost legendarily, in fact—an enthusiastic lover.  Leaving aside Moneypenny’s rather tipsy—and extremely graphic—firsthand account (which she’d bitterly regretted the next morning, swearing Q to secrecy on pain of slow and awful death), Q had read between the terse lines of Bond’s many mission reports, which seemed to suggest a man with a remarkably active—and titillatingly flexible—libido.

Maybe Bond was tired; he’d been out in the field with few intermissions for the best part of two months now.

Or perhaps the agent lacked real motivation for the seduction.

Two months since M had invited Bond back onto the job, and Q couldn’t help but notice that 007’s talents were still being underutilized, present situation excepted.

Turning minor functionaries, undertaking surveillance operations, engaging in long-distance assassinations:  These weren’t the stuff of Bond’s trade.

Frankly, Bond seemed wasted on such petty missions.

The old M had never given Bond a job he hadn’t felt was worthy of his time and efforts, and Q wondered fleetingly if the new M were punishing Bond somehow, forcing him to earn his way back into MI6’s graces after the disastrous loss at Skyfall.

If that were the case, Q hoped M would release Bond from his penance and allow him to return to duties more suited for his nature and training.  If Q himself were bored with Bond’s missions, he could only imagine how 007 was feeling.

 

*****

 

Bond was trying with every ounce of his being—one part stoicism, two parts training—not to feel anything.

That was a tall order given that he was being ripped open by his captor’s every thrust.  The worst of it might be that the man had yet to demand anything of Bond—not information, not capitulation, not even his purpose for being in Greece.

No, all he seemed to want was Bond to lie still and think of England, which might have worked except for the excruciating agony of being penetrated so roughly and with little regard for lubrication.

He let out an almost involuntary grunt, and the man’s grip on his hips tightened, signaling an approaching end to the immediate abuse.

Bond heard a shifting of breath close by, registering that it was Q he was hearing even as he felt the first spurt of his assailant’s seed inside of him.  Bond bit back a second sound, closing his eyes and swallowing hard against the revulsion that wanted to turn his stomach inside out.

Tasting bile and blood from where he’d bitten his cheek to keep from screaming at the first intrusion, Bond released a long breath, trying to keep it steady, hoping that neither the man here nor the one on the other end of the comm link could hear the way it shuddered.

Inside, things moved, juddering, his gut rebelling, his bowels twisting with cramps.  He felt as though he had to expel napalm—and like doing so would tear him open beyond repair.

Breathing through the pain, ignoring the snot on his upper lip and the sweat stinging his eyes, Bond focused on inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale, sucking in a mouthful of wet breath when his attacker pulled out.

“Hang on, 007.”  Q’s voice didn’t quaver; he could have been updating Bond on the time or the prevailing winds on a gusty day, and Bond felt a stab of gratitude all out of keeping with the rest of his condition.

He’d have liked to acknowledge the kindness but for the weight of his assailant crushing his sternum against the hard edge of the table over which Bond had been taken.  The man leaned close, breath reeking of onions and something else, something sour-sweet like the stench of rot. 

He whispered, “What a fucking whore,” and plunged his tongue into Bond’s ear, cackling as he stood up and stepped away, causing Bond’s exposed arse and thighs to pimple in the sudden draft of cold air left in his wake.

Bond heard the door to his cell close and took a deep breath before trying to put his weight on his feet and stand upright.

It was a mistake.  Barbed wire knotted in the small of his back, and tendrils of shearing pain sliced down his thighs, making his knees weak.

He swore vociferously, a vile litany broken by choked sobs as he found his balance at last.  He swayed, momentarily helpless, bound hands numb, treacherous gut clenching against a stream of rapidly cooling fluid that seeped out of him and dribbled down his legs.

He examined the mess almost objectively, as though he were cataloguing a crime scene.  There was blood, enough to color the spunk, enough, in fact, to alarm him if he weren’t already slipping into shock.

Distantly, he heard someone saying, “007.  007.  Bond, are you with us?  Can you hear me, Bond? James?”

“Here,” he managed through clenched teeth, biting them against chattering as chills started to overtake him.  His eyes scanned the nondescript room, cast into dusk by narrow, filthy windows barred from the outside and high up on the stone walls.  Dirt floor.  “It’s a cellar,” he said then, and in some other world, a voice answered, “What else do you see, James?”

“Bond,” he corrected automatically, stuttering on it as he shuffled toward the nearest window, hobbled by his trousers still down around his ankles and by the flaming fist gripping his belly and squeezing. 

“Can you see anything else, Bond?”

“I think it’s dusk, but it could be dawn.  The light is orange, like the sky’s on fire.  I can hear surf; by the rhythm and volume, I’d guess an ocean, not a lake.  There’s a buoy bell.  Two. I—.”

He swallowed the urge to vomit and then surrendered to it when a stream of brown acid burned its way into his mouth.  He wretched miserably, every heave gouging a new trench in his gut, until he was gasping, strings of yellow sick dripping from his mouth, catching in his stubble and staining his ruined shirt.

“I’ll find you, Bond.  I won’t leave you there.”

Somewhere along the way, Q had abandoned the collective pronoun.  In the face of the awful intimacy of what he’d witnessed, he felt personally obligated, more immediately responsible than he’d ever felt before.

He’d heard good men and women die in a hail of gunfire, at the end of a sharp blade—once, horrifically, he’d listened to the life being choked out of an agent with a piano-wire garrote.

None of it had prepared Q to listen to Bond’s violation, and though he’d been helpless to prevent it, he’d be damned to hell before he’d let such treatment continue. 

“Your tracker’s been disabled,” he added, silently thanking the stars that Bond’s earwig hadn’t been discovered too. “But I have the location of the last signal it transmitted.  Together with your observations, I can narrow the search window.  I’ll find you.”

There was no answer from the other end, but Q kept up a steady patter of talk while he focused on the grouping of islands nearest the Greek seaport from which Bond’s tracker had last broadcast its signal.  On a second computer, he began a search algorithm dedicated to collating the last known addresses and/or favorite haunts of MI6’s database of known and suspected international criminals, correlating them with Bond’s final signal.

On a third computer, Q’s second in command was hacking into Greece’s Piraeus Port Authority for records of public and private vessels moving in and out of the port.

On a fourth, his youngest protégé was deftly cross-referencing ex-MI6 operatives—alive as well as purportedly deceased.  It had been only too recently that they’d been attacked by one of their own; Q wasn’t taking any chances this time, not with Bond’s life in the balance.

He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, least of all the man suffering on the other end of the thready communications link, but in the four months they’d been working together, Q had come to look forward to those times when he and Bond interacted in person.  The agent could always be relied on to walk the fine edge between insubordination and flirtation, his eyes devilish, on his lips a suggestive smile inspiring in Q wicked thoughts he never allowed himself to entertain for more than a moment or two.

Q also admired Bond: his epic perseverance, his savoir faire, even his taste in suits, so very different from Q’s own fashion sense.

And he liked the man.  Maybe more than was wise, all things considered.

So it was with a more than usual fervor that Q swore over the monitors, frenetic hands flying on the keys, typing commands almost faster than the computers could process them, waiting for something— _anything_ —to ping.

He needed the sort of miracle only Q branch could provide.  Bond needed it.

“Q?”

Bond’s voice was quiet, so quiet Q almost missed it, focused as he was on the bank of computers before him.

“I’m here, Bond.  What is it?”

“I won’t be conscious for much longer.  Is there anything else you need of me?”

For a wild moment, Q was tempted to answer, _Everything.  Anything you can give me.  A promise you won’t die.  A chance at something._

Instead, he said, “Can you tell if it’s gotten darker out?  That would pinpoint time of day for us.”  Q had no reason to think Bond had been moved more than a time zone or two, but he wanted to keep Bond talking, give him work on which to focus.

There was an agonized series of breaths during which Q thought Bond had already passed out.

Then, in a voice that sounded like Bond had been dragged from the back of a bullet train, “Brighter.”

“Good.  That’s good, Bond.  I can narrow our search even further.  Stay with me.”

He didn’t ask.  He commanded Bond’s attention, and from across the miles separating them, Q heard a dry snort that, worryingly, turned into a gasp.

“007?  Bond?  James?”

*****

The cards were smooth and cool in his hands, the light over the table atmospheric, the dealer’s eyes sharp, black, and clear.

Across from Bond, the mark left a damp thumbprint on the back of his cards, jiggled the ice in his empty tumbler, and shifted in his seat.

None of these were genuine tells, Bond knew.  The man pretended to be nervous, telegraphed his bluffs, in the hope of lulling Bond into a false sense of security.

Bond threw the hand, giving his two queens an almost rueful look before folding.

Across from him, the mark stilled, a slight tightening of his lips at the left corner the only indication that he was feeling superior.

They’d been playing for more than three hours; the manager was about to call for a break.  Bond could use a drink, a shower, and a nap.

One out of three would have to do.

At the bar, a lithe brunette with killer legs in come-fuck-me pumps gave him the once-over from beneath coyly dipped lashes, and Bond smirked, raising his glass in mock toast and shook his head minutely.

She pouted prettily and turned to the bartender for another fluted glass of something pale and expensive.

The blonde in the far corner eyeing Bond up was also pale and expensive but considerably more lethal than the brunette’s champagne.

She was the mark’s mistress-cum-security, a South African diamond heiress turned deadly companion with the kind of reputation bad girls only dreamed of having.

He’d had her earlier in the afternoon, a kind of athletic endeavor reminiscent of rock climbing without ropes—all sharp edges and two-handed death grips. 

Bond stopped himself from rubbing the spot on the thin skin over his collarbone where she’d drawn blood with her teeth.  He thought it would leave a scar, a distinctive, toothy half-grin like a tattoo suggesting he’d once been mauled by a predator at least as dangerous as he himself was.

It should have bothered him that she’d marked her territory, so to speak.  It would have bothered the man he’d once been.

But Bond’s invisible, insidious scar, the one that signified his failure to protect the only person who could have identified him by the hidden costs his life had carved into him—that scar made anything his body earned seem insufficient penance.

Bond surrendered the thought, refocusing his attention on the immediate mission.

The blonde had given him very little by way of information, but then, he hadn’t expected to learn anything valuable.  His seduction had been about playing to form; she’d recognized his type and had expected his approach.  Deviating would have made her suspicious.

The encounter had left him cold, iciness gathering in the region of his diaphragm, a response he ruthlessly ignored.  Across the room, the blonde’s lip curled up into a hungry smirk, and he winked at her, slow and lascivious.

A sigh in his ear told him that Q was bored.  Six months as his handler and Bond had catalogued all of the Quartermaster’s tells, from what a hesitation meant (certain danger, simple caution, genuine uncertainty, peeved disregard) to how genuinely concerned Bond’s handler was.

This sound—the long-suffering, swallowed sigh—told Bond that Q was quite done with this particular mission and rather wished Bond would just kill someone already.

Bond couldn’t blame Q for his sentiment; he shared it, after all.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t kill the mark—one of MI6’s former confidential informants who’d recently taken to courting any bidder with the right amount of cash, regardless of how much blood that cash had been soaked in—at least not until Bond had discovered whether or not the mark had had any real information to sell about MI6 itself.

M had been inclined to think the informant wasn’t a threat, but he’d sent Bond anyway.

“Consider it a transition,” M had suggested, neatly ignoring what Bond was moving away from (a week in hospital, a month of enforced medical leave, twelve mandatory counseling sessions, and a drinking binge that had ended in three moving violations, two destroyed cabs, and one truly apocalyptic hangover) and simultaneously avoiding any indication of what Bond might expect to move towards (an actual mission worthy of his skills and effort).

Still, Bond couldn’t really complain.  Montenegro was lovely in the spring, and the tables had been hot, with a series of high-rollers moving through, leaving always in their wake Bond and the mark and the mark’s man-eating companion.

“Not much longer now,” Bond murmured, sipping a martini dry enough to take the pleats out of his perfect shirt.  He drained the glass, set it down, shot his cuffs, and rose, heading for the lobby and its bank of elevators.

Without looking, he knew the blonde had followed him, and he paused, seemingly appraising his own reflection in the polished brass frame of the elevator.  It was an excuse to catch the same car with her, and by her smile, Bond could tell she’d noticed it.

The doors were hardly closed when she pushed him back against the rail, hard enough that his head might have cracked the mirrored wall if he hadn’t been ready for it.  Blood red nails clawed at his neck and he sidestepped smoothly; it was possible that she had a neurotoxin under one of those lacquered menaces.

“Now, now,” he drawled, half amused, half something else, something lazy and ancient that liked to play with its food.

She slapped him, open-handed, and he let the blow land but moved his head in the direction of the swing to spare his neck and prevent concussion.

The second time her hand came up, he caught it, spinning her around and yanking her back against his chest, other arm wrapping around her and lifting to keep her from driving a stiletto into his instep.

As he’d expected, she threw her head back, hoping to clip him in the nose or chin, but he once again avoided the blow and then pushed off from his back foot, propelling her face first into the far wall.

Her free hand made a meaty slap against the mirror as she saved her face from the impact, and she made a strangled noise of frustration as he laid his weight against her and whispered in her ear, “I like it rough, but mind the gap,” even as the bell dinged signaling her floor and he spun her out into the hallway, hard enough that she had to windmill her arms to stay upright.

By the time she’d righted herself and begun to charge him, the doors were sliding shut, and he gave her a wholly disingenuous, bright smile as she disappeared from view.

The car hummed upward.

“Was that sex or violence?” Q asked, tone utterly uncurious.

“Little of both,” Bond answered, noticing in passing that she’d managed to raise a welt just below his jaw; tiny pinpricks of blood threatened to ruin his collar.  He blotted it with his handkerchief and waited for signs of wooziness.

Bond considered what could have changed between their earlier tango and this latest, considerably deadlier dance.  Someone must have tipped the blonde off to his identity, which suggested that the mark himself had his fingers deeper into MI6’s pie than M had suspected. 

“Tell M the mission has been compromised.  We have a mole.  Again,” Bond told Q, stepping out of the elevator at his floor and moving silently down the corridor toward his suite.

He stopped at the door catty-corner to his own with his back to it, dropping his hand to knock, knowing from ample experience that it was hard to tell whose door—one’s own or someone else’s—was being struck.   Bonds eyes flickered from the gap at the bottom of his door to the pinhole drilled for the inside peephole.  When he observed the usual indications that someone was inside his room waiting for him, he crossed the hall, back to the wall next to his door, and paused.

A cursory search of the hallway told him he was free to pull his gun, which he did, concealing it from the security camera above the elevator by keeping it low and behind his thigh.

He knocked at his own door, adopted a thick, guttural accent, and said, “Room service,” before reaching across the breadth of the door to swipe his keycard across the security plate.

Hand on the doorknob, he bent low, offering his profile as he shoved through the opening fast and hard, rolling at the first shot and coming up behind a side table that held a lamp and a blue glass bowl filled with floating peony blossoms.

As the bowl shattered, Bond crossed the kill zone, diving into the hallway that ran perpendicular to the entryway, fairly certain from the angle of the shots that the shooter was in the living area, probably behind the white leather sofa.

He came up from his dive with his back to a wall, peered around long enough to sense movement, ducked a third shot, and then stepped out and leveled a series of precise shots that pierced the sofa back.

A bitten-off cry told Bond he’d struck his target, but he was taking no chances, keeping what scant cover there was between himself and the would-be assassin before rounding the end of the sofa to find a dark-haired, swarthy man of indeterminate years spilling bright lung blood onto the deep white pile of the suite’s wall-to-wall rug.

Life already fading from his eyes, the shooter didn’t notice Bond kneeling carefully by his side, avoiding the spreading stains, to rifle through his pockets.

“Status, 007,” Q ordered quietly; he’d never been the sort to shout when things got exciting, an early indication to Bond that this boy was actually a seasoned professional.

“I’ll need maid service to my suite.  One gunman, no ID.”

“Naturally,” Q offered dryly, neatly echoing what Bond himself had been thinking.  “Anything else?”

“Tell M I’m going to ground.  I’ll be in touch.”

Bond could just make out Q’s protest as he dislodged the earwig and dropped it onto the pink, cupped petal of a wilting peony.

Bond changed with efficiency born of years of practice, gathered the few items he’d need, dug the tracker out of his arm, and left the suite only minutes after he’d entered, counting on the erstwhile assassin’s silencer and the general attitude of patrons of such luxury establishments to give him the time he needed to make a clean escape.

In London, Q was left staring at the monitor which was no longer showing the comforting blue glow of Bond’s tracking signal.

A glance at a second window told Q what he already knew:  He could no longer communicate with 007.

Swallowing dread, Q uploaded the data to an encrypted alias account through a pinhole in the firewall he’d constructed for just such an occasion, erased the last fifteen minutes of data from MI6’s hard drives, backstopped his actions with a sleeper Trojan that he activated remotely from his phone while he strolled unhurriedly to the emergency stairwell that led directly to M’s office.

In the highly unlikely eventuality that M himself was the mole in MI6, what Q was about to do constituted suicide.

But Q didn’t believe M capable of such monumental perfidy, and he had begun to see, through a tangle of misdirection, obfuscations, and outright lies, a method to M’s apparently mad decision to put the head of Q branch in charge of a single 00 agent.

Moneypenny’s office was dark and still, but there was a narrow band of golden light beckoning him toward M’s inner sanctum.

He entered without knocking.

M was sitting with his back to the door; he’d disengaged the privacy mode on his floor-to-ceiling windows and was staring out across an Impressionist’s dream, heavy rain making the famous London view a blur of color, light, and shadow:  _Tower in the Rain_.  Thinking of art made Q remember the first time he’d met Bond, and a fierce longing came over him, powerful enough that he had to take a steadying breath and remind himself why he’d come to the lion’s den. 

“Did you know this would happen?”  He didn’t preface his question; M knew what he was talking about.  M knew everything that went on at MI6.

Almost everything.

M indicated Q’s presence only by a slight shifting of his shoulders, a kind of Gallic shrug that irritated Q into raising his voice.

“Did you know they were going to try to kill Bond tonight?”

“Someone’s always trying to kill Bond, Q.  That’s the way the game is played.”

“It’s not a game.”

“Of course it is.  I’d think you, of all people, would understand that.”

Q ignored the pointed reminder of the reason for which he’d been recruited and plowed on.

“What happened to Bond on the island, was that—?”  Q was spared having to finish the horrifying question by M’s short, sharp, “No,” which somehow sounded both forbidding and regretful.  “That had nothing whatever to do with the rest.”

“Then was Bond in on all of it?  Did you plan this together?”

“Feeling left out, are we?”

“Fuck you,” Q said distinctly, taking two steps toward M’s desk. 

“No,” M answered, deigning at last to swivel around to face Q across the deep shadows that divided them.  “Bond didn’t know.”  
  
“Why would he go along with it, then, the shite missions and the bloody babysitting and all the rest of it?”

“Bond may not believe in sin, but he understands atonement intimately.”

Anger, hot and pure, stole Q’s breath and left him momentarily speechless, a condition from which he recovered when M gave him the look that usually proceeded dismissal from his presence.

“Is that what this is, then?  You’re punishing Bond for what happened at Skyfall?  For losing her?”  Q was proud of himself for how calm the words seemed, how his tone was even and bland, not hinting in the least the banked ire firing his aggression.

“I’m not punishing him at all.  Bond’s a natural flagellant.  I needed for him to seem vulnerable, untrustworthy, hence the ‘shite missions,’ as you called them.  Our enemies had to believe that 007 had fallen out of favor, that he was no longer my man.”

 _He’s never been yours_ , Q thought, but he kept his face from showing any intimation of his internal rebellion.

“What do you expect us to do now?  We can’t track or contact him.  We have to wait for him to come to us, and given that he’s now aware that someone in MI6 is trying to kill him…”

“I suppose that’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

“You can find anyone, anywhere, at any time, regardless of circumstances.  I’m sure that even now, you’ve got a half dozen contingency plans for disappearing and at least twice as many false trails to lead a pursuer on a merry chase.”

“Good god, it’s Skyfall all over again!”

“No,” M said, shaking his head.  Behind him, the lights of London twinkled through the blurring rain.  “There’s a key difference.  Bond’s not got to protect anyone but himself; he’s stronger and better armed and readier this time.”

“You’ve forgotten another difference, though, an important one, given Bond’s…penitent nature.”

“What’s that?”

“Bond no longer has anyone _left_ to protect.”

“There’s where you’re wrong, Q.”

Q might have been embarrassed for just how long it took for the penny to drop; he imagined in that instant Moneypenny smirking at him from her desk in the other room, rolling her eyes fondly and saying his name in that exasperated way she had.

He _might’ve_ been embarrassed but for the trickle of warmth moving through him and then the chill that chased it away; he was simultaneously thrilled and terrified that he might have earned James Bond’s trust.

“Am I to be bait, then?”

“No.”  For such a short word, it carried an awful lot of weight, chiefly of the “fool me once” variety. 

Q waited, tired of asking questions as though being led through a lesson by Socratic method. 

But M merely gave him an arch eyebrow of the sort that suggested Q was shamefully slow.  Still reeling from the revelation that the feelings he’d had for Bond might in some way be returned, it took Q until M actually made a minute sound of impatience before he realized.

“Leave Stacy in charge,” he said then, not caring a whit that he’d just given his superior an order.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about; you’ll be here tomorrow, bright and early.”

“It’s already tomorrow,” Q answered briskly, showing M his back and heading for the door.

  
*****

Cairo’s narrow, ancient alleys smelled of cat piss, rotting garbage, and sin.  His back to a wall that probably predated Hadrian’s, Bond ignored the miasma in favor of keeping his eyes on his mark, a middle-aged, ferret-faced antiquities fence in a straw hat and soiled white linen suit.

If it weren’t for the blood he could feel dripping down his inner arm and making abstract art of the filth at his feet, Bond might have found it risible:  so many things had changed since Carnarvon and his ilk dug trouble out of the depths of the desert sands, yet some things remained.

Always, there was someone willing to make fools of the tourists.

Bond tightened his left arm against his body, trying to assist the make-shift pressure bandage he’d fastened with his teeth, and kept his right firmly around the handle of the brass knife he’d stolen from a vendor in the bazaar.  It was not particularly well-balanced, and he thought it might be Ptolemaic in origin, but any pointed object would pierce tender flesh if driven with enough force and in the right direction.

Bond couldn’t afford to miss.

For one thing, the mark was the last in a chain of targets who would at last lead him to the mole in MI6.   Then, maybe he could return to London for a long rest.

For another thing, he estimated that he had ten minutes left before blood loss made him too weak to hold his weapon steady.

He crossed the alley, shadows lending him stealth, and grabbed the mark with his left hand, the blood making his grip slip against the nape of the man’s neck and reducing the force with which Bond propelled him through a narrow doorway and into the murky interior of a cool, bare room.

Ferret-face was a lover, not a fighter, apparently, for he began almost at once to grovel, his hands coming up in pathetic supplication, his lips drawing back from his teeth in a rictus of terror.

Bond wasn’t buying it, and he raised the knife meaningfully.

“Talk or die.  Your choice.”

At once, the mark dropped his façade, lounging back against the wall and reaching deliberately into his pocket to pull out a slender, hand-rolled cigarette.  With his other hand, he fished in his pocket for a lighter, and when he had completed the ritual—which said, as clearly as words in any language, that the man was not afraid of Bond—he smirked.

“What do you think you’ll accomplish here, Mr. Bond?  You cannot kill me, or you lose the last link in your tenuous chain.  You cannot torture the information from me.”  The man didn’t bother to explain, only giving a significant look at Bond’s left shoulder.

He’d have matching scars if he survived this, Bond had time to think, before the mark made an abrupt move towards him, as if to make a dash for the door.

Bond brought the knife up, his aim wavering, vision beginning to blur with blood loss and exhaustion, and the man ran right into it, as though that had been his intention all along.

Bond staggered back, wounded shoulder striking the wall, and he grunted with the pain.  Brain sluggish, motions slowing, he tried to hold the mark up, tried to make words that would elicit the information he so desperately needed.

“The name,” he tried to say.  “Just give me the name.”

Whether or not he actually made a sound, he didn’t know.  As his knees gave way under the weight of the dying man, Bond caught a flicker of movement from the doorway, and he tried to pull the knife from the mark, tried to bring up his left hand to defend himself, tried to turn his head slowly, slowly, and narrow his eyes to bring them into focus. But the world was reducing itself like a curtain closing, and it was all for nothing.

The tunnel narrowed and narrowed, grey moving in to eat up the remaining color in his life, and then Bond was falling down a bottomless well until the blue sky and the pinprick sun and the invisible stars winked out of existence and he was gone.

“007?  Bond!”

He wasn’t going to answer the importunate voice; he wanted to float in the dark, deprived of light, and concentrate on the susurrus of his sea-like breathing as it rushed in and out, in and out, in and—

“James?”

There was something softer in the voice, pleading almost, and he felt a touch against the skin of his wrist, below the tight place on his inner arm where he knew there must be an IV.

He’d spent far too much of his shrinking portion of life in hospitals and sickrooms not to recognize what the place was, even if he did not know _where_ it was, exactly.

It took a greater effort than he’d ever admit to lever open his eyes, squinting against the brightness in the room, glad when he found it dim and shadowy, a yellow-dusky light cut by heavy blinds and a body imposed between himself and the overhead fixture.

Everything was muted, like he was seeing the world through a Vaselined lens, and he struggled to make sense of things.

He knew who it was who had called him up out of the drifting darkness.  He’d known it even before he’d recognized the hesitant touch, proprietorial yet somehow also requesting permission, as if to say, “I think this is mine to do, but I have to hear it from you.”

Bond wasn’t a gentle man, and the touch, the tone, all of it should have bothered him, the fussing over his bed, the stroke that even now pulled his pulse into a quicker rhythm.

It didn’t, and that’s when Bond knew he was lost.

He swallowed around a terrible fear, remembering the last time he’d been grievously injured, remembering how a beloved voice had awoken some powerful creature in him that he hadn’t been able to kill or quiet.

Then Q was saying, “You’re safe, Bond.  You’re in a private clinic.  Your name is Jonathan Bell, and I’m your partner, Alex Currier.”

“Partner?” Bond managed, voice full of broken glass. 

With matter-of-fact efficiency, Q offered him a straw, and he sipped slowly, the lukewarm water both an agony and a boon as it worked its way down his parched throat.

“In our export business,” Q explained, voice part amusement, part warning:  There were people about.  Maintain cover.

“What happened?”  Bond asked, and Q fed him their cover story—he’d been meeting a man about purchasing some Late Dynasty faience beads when they’d both been attacked; the other man had been killed, and it had been a close thing for “Jonathan,” too.  

While Q spun the tale, a nurse bustled in to check Bond’s vitals and offer to remove his catheter.

Q gave them privacy for that particular brand of sanctioned torture, and then he was back, hands looking strangely bereft without a computer to occupy them.

Bond had winced his way through a propping-up so that at least he could see Q more clearly, and the nurse had opened the shades enough to let in a wedge of bright afternoon light that drove shadows into the corner by the door and the closet.  He tried not to look as though he was expecting an attack from those quarters.

“We’re fine for now.  I’ve covered our tracks.  But the sooner we can get you out of here, the better I’ll feel.  I’ve got a car that can take us wherever we need to go, leaving tomorrow, assuming the doctor will sign you out.”

“If he won’t, I’ll leave anyway.”

But Q shook his head.  “You’re still groggy, aren’t you?  How would it look for a hapless dealer in antiquities to disappear from a Cairo clinic?”

“For what you’ve paid for this room, I’d expect discretion.”

Q frowned.  “Have you forgotten what we’re up against?”

 “When did it become ‘we’?”

“Ah,” and for the first time, Q looked as though he didn’t belong at Bond’s bedside, as if he were uncertain of his welcome.

Bond reached out his right hand, straining against the taped needle, to brush his fingers along Q’s near hand.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful.  I only wondered…”

Q nodded rapidly.  “Later,” Q murmured, and though Bond wasn’t satisfied with putting off the explanation, he let Q have his way.  He was tired, and even the limited movements he’d tried had awakened the pain of his injuries, the unmistakable complaint of flesh violently violated.

“How bad is it?” he asked, nodding at his left shoulder and trying to keep his tone even.  It wouldn’t do to give away his fear of being maimed, disabled—prey.

“Through and through.  Blood loss was the worst of it, plus the contusions from when you fell—what did you fall from, anyway?”

“The second floor of the Windsor Hotel.” 

“Like a proper Englishman,” Q noted, referring to the hotel’s long and storied history as a bastion of English manhood.  Q’s grin was tired but genuine, and it lit something warm inside Bond that he put away for later—whether to savor or regret, he’d only know with time.

“Later” turned out to be a series of days made hazy by drugs and pain and constant, blowing sand.  Q had scrounged up a Land Rover so decrepit it might have been dug out of the desert by Napolean’s army.  It had no suspension to speak of, and the roads they used hardly deserved the name:  rutted tracks, pitted and pot-holed.  By the end of the first afternoon, Bond was gritting his teeth against the lancing pain and using every trick of his training not to cry uncle.

They were forced to stop a half-dozen times to let herds of goats cross. Once, a Bedouin family materialized out of the heat waves, the patriarch with his hawk nose and black, piercing eyes giving them a dismissive glance as he led his wives and children across the track.

They spent the nights sleeping rough in shifts in the Rover or sheltered in roofless mud buildings that might once have housed the British Army, the stars overhead made brilliant by the cold.  They shared body heat and two battered, flea-ridden blankets, made bad jokes and worse coffee over meager morning fires, and pretended that there wasn’t something enormous between them, as if they were being haunted by a future they refused to name or acknowledge.

There was no sign of pursuit, which was a blessing, because on the third day, Bond was taken by fever and spent a shivering day and a screaming night with the worst of his past and every awful future he’d ever carved out of darkness in the desperate watches of his life.

Q held Bond while he was wracked with delirium, sweating and shaking by turns, teeth chattering so hard they made a racket he swore even the stars could hear.

He didn’t lie to Bond, didn’t tell him things would be alright.  They weren’t schoolboys sharing a dim hall, narrow beds side by side as they whispered confessions they’d deny in the light of day.

Truth be told, Q was worried—for Bond, whose ghastly pallor startled women at crossroads, who muttered counter-curses and made signs against evil as if 007 were an afrit summoned to sow sorrow among them.

And he worried about their future.  The dead antiquities fence had been Bond’s last lead on tracking down the mole in MI6; Q had gotten that much out of him at the hospital.  In exchange, he’d filled Bond in on how he’d tracked him—simple, really, given how well Q knew him—and why he’d chosen not to intervene earlier.

“Really, 007, you have to cut back on the dosage of those painkillers; they’re addling what brain you’ve managed to spare from concussion.  If I’d revealed myself sooner, who’d have been there to save you when things went tits up?”

“Of course,” Bond had answered dryly, corner of his mouth curling up in a wicked smirk.  “Silly me.”

“To be fair, you were doing quite well until you got shot.”

“Any idea who shot me?” Bond had asked, face going stony at Q’s tell-tale expression of regret. Obviously, it had been the mole, but they were no closer to discovering his or her identity.

“I’m afraid I wasn’t there to see the shot.  I’d been following the fence, you see.”

He’d almost called M from the clinic when it had seemed that Bond might not pull through, the blood loss and bruises and dehydration and exhaustion nearly overcoming Bond’s legendary resistance to death.

Q had only hesitated because he couldn’t imagine delivering the news without his voice breaking, a humiliation he could spare himself by remaining incommunicado.

Now, though, four hundred miles from Tripoli, Bond weakened by the fever, which had only broken that morning, Q wasn’t sure he shouldn’t throw in the towel.  He could get M on a secure line; he trusted the man far enough to believe that if he’d intended James Bond dead, 007 would have already found an eternal rest free of any threat of resurrection.

Still, it seemed a failure of sorts to call in the troops now, after they’d come so far alone and together.

“Don’t,” Bond said then, drawing Q from his ruminations on surrender.

“What?” Q asked curiously, taking in Bond’s ghoulish skin tone and the way his right hand, wrapped around the enameled tin of a water cup, trembled as though he’d been afflicted overnight with palsy.

“Don’t think of giving us up yet.  We have a few tricks left in us.”

“Have we?”  He kept his tone just this side of pathetic by sheer stubborn will.

“The worst of it is over with me.  Give me a few days sleep, and I’ll be good as new.  There must be something you can do with that thing,” and here, Bond gestured in the direction of Q’s blanket-swaddled laptop, “to find us shelter, preferably someplace with a roof, a hot tub, and a masseuse on staff.”

Q made a noncommittal sound.

“I believe in you,” Bond said then, voice soft enough that Q might have missed the words altogether had he not been staring distractedly at Bond’s lips, wondering what they’d feel like against his own.

“Why?” he asked, not fishing for compliments, just wondering at the trust Bond seemed to have for him—a trust M had understood long before Q had even recognized it.

“Because you’re the best I’ve ever seen.  And because, despite the fact that I’m a flea-bitten, scarred-up, mangy bulldog unfit for human company, you have faith in me.”

“Is this the part where we kiss?” Q managed, though it came out a little short of air.

“Only if you come to me, I’m afraid,” Bond answered, indicating his bad shoulder with a rueful smirk.

They’d crossed a desert together; surely crossing a few feet of packed dirt shouldn’t seem like such a monumental task, should it?

And yet, it felt to Q like it took him a glacial age to make the journey.

Bond was sitting with his back to the partial wall of yet another roofless ruin.  He had his legs straight out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, and as Q came, he had set down his cup well out of the way.  When Q hesitated, Bond raised his good hand, palm up, and Q took it, an act that felt as natural as breathing. 

He straddled Bond’s legs and then sank to his knees, one hand against the wall above Bond’s bad shoulder to brace himself, the other still gripped in Bond’s.

He hovered scant inches from Bond’s lips, eyes taking in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the sharp cheekbones, strong chin, the fullness of his lower lip, and his eyes themselves, warm and alive, bluer than anything natural had a right to be.

With an impatient sound, Bond tugged on Q’s hand, urging him closer still.

Q held his breath as he touched his lips to Bond’s, stifled an urgent sound as Bond’s tongue swept hot and sure over Q’s lower lip, opening his mouth on a needy exhale and plunging in.

Abruptly, Q sat on his heels and moved his hand from the wall to the back of Bond’s head, cradling, supporting him so that Q could own more of the kiss, could take control of it, slow it down, explore the contours of Bond’s cheek with his thumb, slide his tongue along Bond’s, suck his lower lip between his teeth and nip.

Bond made a sound, low and wanting, and brought his hand up to cup Q through his trousers.

It was Q’s turn to make a desperate noise, and Bond tore his mouth away, gusting hot, damp breath into his ear as he growled a filthy promise and squeezed suggestively.

Q grinned, leaning back enough to take in Bond’s kiss-roughened lips and the flush of arousal across his face, which softened the harsh lines of him and filled Q with a ridiculous desire to protect Bond from the world’s hurts.

As if anyone in the world needed protecting less than James Bond.

“I’m not sure that’s anatomically possible, 007,” Q teased, bringing his hips forward enough to brush his obvious erection against Bond’s equally evident one.

“You can do some geometric calculations while you drive.”

“Anatomy’s not my field of expertise.”

Bond dragged his knuckles deliberately over Q’s arousal.  “I know a thing or two.  I’ll help.”

“Lot of good you’ll do me,” Q observed, driven breathless by Bond’s maddeningly slow teases.  “Probably end up in a ditch, and then what?”

“Then,” Bond whispered, voice wicked and rich, “we’ll be exactly where your mother always warned you men like me would get you.”

Q chortled, a wild burble of sound all out of place in that sere wasteland.  He threw his head back, baring his long, white throat, inviting Bond to lean in and taste his skin, salty and silken under a layer of road dust.

They might have abandoned all reason and opened one another’s flies, might have brought each other, moaning and panting, to rough, quick completion, adding the heady scent of sex to the mélange of odors already trapped in their unwashed clothes.

Might have made a right mess of each other then had it not been for the throaty chugging of a vehicle moving slowly but steadily in their direction.

Immediately, their languor was gone, replaced by quick, efficient motions:  Bond checking that his gun was free of sand, Q retrieving the third-hand Uzi he’d refused to tell Bond the story behind and taking cover, putting the southern section of low wall between himself and the likely target.

Bond had moved to his knees and crawled to a second vantage point further along the same wall Q used now for cover.  This way, they’d have two angles on the vehicle.

“Toyota Hi-lux,” Bond predicted, narrowing his eyes against the cloud of dust kicked up by the truck, which was half a kilometer away and closing inexorably on their position.

“Terrorist truck du jour,” Q noted wryly, taking one hand away from the gun long enough to bring his bandana up over his mouth like some American Old West outlaw. 

He watched the truck approach, heart hammering against his ribs but breath steady enough; he’d learned a lot in the two months he’d spent tracking Bond down to Cairo.  He’d killed a man in Budapest, disabled three more in Ankara.

He’d even had a high-speed chase, a story he’d been saving to share with Bond when they were clean and prone and gloriously naked—

Q put away the thought as the Hi-lux ground to a halt, brakes protesting, presumably because the driver had seen their Land Rover, parked behind the building but hardly concealed from watchful eyes.

The driver stepped out and a passenger, too, from the front seat.  In the open rear, a third party stood up from where he must have been riding facing backwards down the road the way they’d come.

The driver was a white man of indeterminate age, skin tanned to leathery brown by the unrelenting sun, eyes grooved at the corners from evident years of exposure to the harsh light.  He was wearing loose-fitting trousers and shirt, sandals, and sunglasses, and his hands were empty and open, palms outward in the universal sign of the unarmed or simply duplicitous.

His companion was a handsome woman of late middle age whose honey-colored hair was caught up in a messy bun beneath a broad, straw sunhat with a faded blue ribbon.  The boy in the back of the truck was perhaps sixteen, lanky, with a mop of dark hair drooping like a comma in the middle of his forehead.

“Hello there in the ruins!” called the man in a decidedly public school accent.

Q exchanged a look with Bond and rose from his place of concealment, tugging down his face covering and resting the Uzi within Bond’s easy reach as he did so.

He stepped out of the building and onto the broken bricks that must once have been a courtyard for the place.

“Hello,” Q answered, enunciating every ounce of Eton he could claim.  “Didn’t expect to run into countrymen out here.”

There was much of the usual hail-fellow-well-met, hearty handshakes, a round of introductions, Bond appearing from the shadows of the building and explaining away the sling with a self-deprecating story about falling at Giza.

The man, whose name was Clinton Blackwell, introduced his Aunt Meredith and his grandnephew, Thomas, who’d just graduated (“Early and with honors,” Aunt Merry was quick to add) from Harrow and had been rewarded with an old-fashioned “tour.”

“Egypt, ‘the Levant,’” she said breezily.  “It’s ‘retro,’ you know,” she added, articulating the quotation marks.  “ _A Thousand Miles Up the Nile_ and all that.”

They had a good laugh over the strange ideas of the younger generation, Thomas blushing and stammering his way through it all good-naturedly, and then the family asked where Q and Bond were staying, and they admitted to having been rather cavalier about planning.

“We’ve been quite the Bedouins,” Q confided with a sly little smile in James’ direction.  Aunt Merry, whom Bond had correctly pegged as the sort who liked the appearance of a certain open-minded tolerance, immediately picked up on the cue, and as easily as that, they were welcomed to join them—“Like a caravan, how romantic,” Meredith giggled.

Over Clinton’s protestations that “the boys might like their privacy, dear,” Meredith insisted that ‘Jonathan’ and ‘Alex’ follow them to the “positively extravagant” resort at which they’d booked their next few days’ stay.

“It’s a traveler’s dream,” Meredith confided.  “Very few people know about it.  Only the right sorts, you know.”  She apparently had a moment of worry that perhaps Bond and Q weren’t included in that category and then, with a nervous little laugh, she shooed them into their Rover.

“Don’t let us out of your sight, now,” she chirped, and Q smiled until his cheeks ached and waved merrily, and then they were off, keeping them far enough ahead that they didn’t choke on the dust from the Hi-lux but close enough that they could intervene at the first signs of trouble.

There was no trouble, however, not in the remainder of the crossing nor at the resort, which was, indeed, a miraculous oasis in the desert waste.  They had a suite available, and Q and Bond booked it with a wad of rumpled local currency that made the desk clerk blink, and then hurried away from the desk, as though eager to be alone, before anyone could question the state of their clothes or paucity of luggage.

The room was tiled in cool blue and light green, the walls an inoffensive cream, the bed hung with silky curtains, pulled back to swag against the posts with tasseled gold ropes.  The bathroom was enormous, offering a cavernous tub with massage jets and a separate two-person, glass walk-in shower.  There was a dual vanity, an assortment of salon products, bottled water from a “holy spring,” and towels large enough to wrap twice around Q’s slender waist.

“That’s it.  I’m giving up the life of international intrigue to become a kept man,” Q declared as he stripped from his filthy kit and then proceeded to help Bond out of his sling, shoes, and clothes.

There was almost nothing sexual in it, at least not until they’d each washed—Q aiding Bond, who had grumbled but surrendered the loofah when Q pointed out that there was no way for James to wash his own back—and shampooed their respective heads. 

Once Q was satisfied that they were clean, however, he wasted no time falling to his knees, wrapping a hand around Bond’s quiescent cock, and sucking it slowly and thoroughly to hardness.  Bond’s fingers threaded through his hair, guiding but not insisting, and when he tightened his fist in warning Q only hummed his approval and waited for the hot splash of Bond’s spend, which he swallowed without a qualm.

He rose easily despite a prodigious erection of his own, and Bond once more tightened his fingers in Q’s wet hair, this time to pull Q in and suck his own taste from Q’s tongue.

Then he guided Q one-handed to the cool tiled wall of the shower, between the steaming twin streams of water, and brought him off by hand, murmuring filthy, delicious things about Q’s cock and his tongue and his nipples and his hips, and in between words sucking a purple love mark into the thin skin over his collarbone.

Having Q in his hand at last, pumping his hips, sliding his cock through his grip, hearing his bitten-off curses as Bond sucked his neck and stroked him, feeling him shudder through his orgasm, his spend splashing Bond’s wrist, right where he’d first felt Q’s touch when he’d awoken in the Cairo clinic…none of it was what Bond had imagined in those few and precious idle moments of his life when he’d permitted himself that particular forbidden fantasy of fucking his quartermaster.

But it was _perfect_.

Later, after Q had straddled Bond’s head, propped up on pillows, and let Bond lick him open.

After he’d sunk slowly onto Bond’s slicked fingers, felt them scissor inside of him, felt his heart flutter uncertainly at the feeling growing and growing in him.

After he’d mounted Bond and been riven open, ridden them both to a shouting climax.

After he’d splayed himself, damp and naked, across Bond’s heaving chest and tasted the clean sweat on his breastbone and felt the great heart beating strong beneath his cheek.

After he’d caught his breath and swallowed around the feeling in his throat threatening to choke him, Q offered his name, his real name, and felt Bond’s lips against his temple, felt him stroke a finger behind his ear, along his jaw, down each knob of his spine, felt the rumble of his words, spoken slowly and clearly, no room for doubt about them at all.

Their relationship had been built over long distances, and it was this voice—Bond’s assured, deep, steady voice—that Q counted on to tell him what he needed to know.

For Bond’s part, he discovered that he didn’t mind Q’s not inconsiderable weight—he had lean muscle for all that he appeared whippet-thin—didn’t mind not being able to take a full breath.  Didn’t feel trapped, didn’t notice the twinges of protest put up by his injured shoulder.

Didn’t hesitate to say what he felt, meaning every word of it.

Only Q’s hitch of breath, only his sudden stillness, like he’d fallen unconscious or dead, made Bond wonder if he’d misunderstood, if indeed it was all a different kind of betrayal.

And then Q was kissing him, passionately but slowly, the kind of lingering, tender kiss that spoke volumes.  And then, too, he was making his own promise, his voice close in Bond’s ear, where it belonged, where it had started and where he was fool enough to hope that it would someday finish, far in the future, side by side, touching shoulders to toes, should time and their lives permit such luxury.

They were thousands of miles from home, bruised and battered, unmoored from every certainty of their lives but this moment, the feelings they shared, the evidence of their love still cooling between their bodies, the smell of one another, the taste and touch, the sound of breathing, low and steady, and the sight of the beloved here.

*****

Epilogue

“Target acquired.  Am I clear?”

“Scanning…”

“Target’s moving.  Am I clear?”

“Take the shot, 007.”

The firing of Bond’s sniper rifle with its sound suppressor came across to Q like a movie-effect blowdart, a sharp, breathy, “Phthwp” that seemed unreal.

A moment of live air between them, suspended, attenuating.

Then, “Target down.”

“Cleared for exfil,” Q answered automatically, scanning the red blips on his laptop screen that indicated the locations of possible witnesses.  Bond had a clear run to the nondescript, late model Saab they’d boosted only that morning.

From his seat beneath a broad umbrella at a sidewalk café fifteen blocks from Bond’s position, Q spoke as though into a Bluetooth device and sipped a passable café au lait, paying scant attention to the croissant on a plate at his left elbow but a great deal to the woman across the way, who had been leaning against a lamppost, apparently engrossed in the day’s headlines, for twelve minutes.

Bond had suspected the final mark might have an accomplice, someone unseen, unheard, unknown except by association.  The athletic-looking redhead with the dimples and a penchant for talking to herself seemed a safe bet.

It wasn’t by chance, after all, that Q was sitting in that particular café.

A minute passed.  Q imagined Bond had already disposed of the rifle, its various parts going into trash bins and down sewer grates, perhaps into the long, kidney-shaped pond of the park through which his blue dot was passing as Q kept his eyes on the woman, who had straightened from her casual pose and was looking grim.

Her lips appeared to be repeating the same words over and over.  Something like, “Come in, X.  X, come in.”

Q felt an entirely unexpected wave of sympathy wash through him.  How often had he been where she was, waiting breathlessly for Bond to answer him?  He well remembered what it felt like to hear only dead air where there had been a live voice, recalled distinctly the dread of wondering what had happened.

He swallowed past his misplaced guilt and rose from his seat, closing and stowing the laptop, slinging the bag over his head and across his body, messenger-style, and leaving a tip for the waiter before looking both ways and crossing the street.

They’d already agreed to how this must go, Bond resistant at first to the idea of Q involving himself directly, his objections answered by Q’s clear logic and a not a little of the sweeter variety of persuasion.

“She won’t be a danger to me,” Q had said.  “She doesn’t know who I am or what I look like.  She’s not one of us.”

“She can kill like anyone else,” Bond had argued.

“She won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s like me, Bond.  She’s a voice on the other end of the line.  She commands the board but never touches the pieces.”

“She’s nothing at all like you.”  Bond had pulled Q closer, fitting him against his hard, lean body, speaking the next words directly into his ear.  “You’re mine, after all.”

Q had appreciated the possessive words as much as he’d enjoyed the possession that followed them, Bond being nothing if not thorough when on a mission.

Now, on a mission of his own, Q dismissed the pleasant memories of the day (and night) before.

“He won’t answer.”  He and Bond had decided that the direct approach was best.

“Pardon me?”  Her voice had the suggestion of an accent, something Eastern European, glottal and full of consonants.

“You’ve got two choices.  You can wait here with me for my partner, who will guarantee you safety from harm, immunity from prosecution, and a new identity if you cooperate.  Or you can try to run, at which point my partner and I will track you down and eliminate the burden of choice altogether.”

She looked for a moment as though she were going to try it; her left hand strayed toward the small of her back, where he suspected she’d concealed a small caliber handgun.

Just then, the confident purr of a well-built engine enveloped them in sound, and he saw her eyes track to the Saab idling illegally at the curb just to his right.  He didn’t have to glance over his shoulder to see the expression on Bond’s face, the cold, hard confidence in his blue eyes or the way his capable hands held the steering wheel, daring her to draw.

The accomplice put both hands up at waist level, palms out, a surrender made polite for public view, and Q stepped around her to take the gun from its place of concealment.  With his free hand, he gestured her toward the front passenger side, its door already open.  She slid inside without a sound, staring straight ahead, as if by refusing to look at Bond, she could make him disappear.

It was the last gambit of a desperate game, one that she’d lost.

The Saab pulled away, Bond having arranged through secret channels the secure transport of their prisoner, leaving Q to return by a circuitous street route to their flat, a little rent-by-the-week affair with scratchy sheets and stained grouting.

It might’ve been the Ritz Carlton for all they’d cared.  They’d christened every surface in the flat—and then that morning erased all evidence of their presence, expecting that however the midday mission turned out, they were done with the little space they’d made, quite memorably, their own.

As it had turned out, Bond’s command of anatomy was quite up to Q’s grasp of angles.

Q made a last sweep of the flat, shouldered Bond’s duffel, wiped down the door handle, and stopped at the ground floor to slide an envelope under the landlord’s door.

He walked three blocks to a bus stop, got on the Number Three, transferred to the Number Twelve, and got off at the edge of a neighborhood marked by gentrification:  brightly painted flower boxes on the windowsills, refurbished brickwork, new light fixtures and curbing.

An Audi A-series, sleek in silver, with an understated power entirely in character with its driver, pulled almost silently to the curb.  He got in and closed the door, fastened his seatbelt, and felt Bond pull sedately out into the early afternoon traffic.

“Home?” Bond asked casually, eyes on the traffic, though the near corner of his mouth curled upward in a smile meant only for Q.

“Home,” Q agreed, knowing the word meant London and headquarters, debriefings and reports, the daily round of their lives resuming, though there were new elements to add to the old routine.

Knowing too that ‘home’ meant anywhere at all, so long as they were together, Q’s voice in Bond’s ear, Bond’s voice answering.


End file.
